Computer simulation saved more than $100,000 dollars in the design of a new coal preheating technology for low NOx burners by making it possible to get the design right the first time. The Gas Technology Institute (GTI) is developing a NOx reduction process under a cooperative agreement with the Department of Energy to provide a cost effective, combustion-based alternative to selective catalytic reduction (SCR). Development targets include NOx reduction to below 0.15 pounds per million Btu, reduced CO2 emissions, and a 55% electricity cost reduction compared to SCR. The technology combines GTI’s Methane de-NOX reburn technology with a pulverized coal (PC) preheating approach developed for utility pulverized coal combustors by the All-Russian Thermal Engineering Institute (VTI). Many variations of the initial burner design were evaluated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), making it possible for engineers to determine an optimized design concept. As a result, the initial prototype met the design objectives, eliminating the need to build and test additional prototypes at a cost that would have probably run into six figures each.

Fluent Inc. has announced the release of IcePro 3.0, its Pro/Engineer®-to-Icepak interface. The interface builds on its successful integration of CAD software with the thermal modeling software Icepak.

This release is an advance in the CAD integration paradigm introduced in the previous versions of the interface. By allowing the user to use simplification tools available in Pro/Engineer itself, the time required to get thermal models from CAD systems is reduced dramatically. The philosophy of the integrated Pro/Engineer CAD interface is to take advantage of design engineers' expertise in using Pro/Engineer to define the thermal model, -- Icepak Product Manager, Dr. Rajesh Nair.

The IcePro user can take advantage of many of Pro/Engineer's CAD and database features, such as single instance exporting of repetitive features. The interface allows the user to load an assembly, and export specific parts or sub-assemblies to Icepak. The export mechanism also allows the user to capture non-geometric information.

IcePro 3.0 is now available from Fluent Inc for Windows NT/Windows 2000 platforms only, for Icepak users worldwide for an annual license fee of $2,500. The product will be made available on UNIX platforms at a later date. Visit the Icepak web site and the Fluent web site for a listing of worldwide offices and distributors.

In order to stimulate research in the area of CFD, the CD adapco Group would like to award prizes to researchers. Three prizes will be awarded for outstanding PhD theses which represent important and original contributions to the knowledge in the field of numerical techniques or physical models aimed at simulation of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer and related processes. In addition to a special diploma and invitation to present the research work at one of our User Conferences, the winners will also receive prize money:

1st Prize: 5000 US$
2nd Prize: 2000 US$
3rd Prize: 1000 US$

Entries are being accepted from candidates from all over the world. Deadline is September 1st, 2002 and theses up to two years old will be accepted.

According to this NASA Tech Brief,
Boeing has incorporated an array of NASA-developed software to analyze designs of its new Sonic Cruiser commercial jet. NASA Overset CFD Software, Chimera Grid Tools, and Pegasus 5 software all are being used
to perform computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of the aircraft design, reducing the amount of wind tunnel testing that will be needed.

NASA Overset CFD Software has been used by Boeing over the past year to run hundreds of CFD calculations. Chimera Grid Tools contains a variety of tools for the Chimera overset grid approach for solving CFD problems. It also contains a program known as OVERGRID, which serves as a graphical user
interface to most of the package tools. PEGASUS 5 is a series of mesh interpolation codes for flow analysis problems.

Boeing's Sonic Cruiser is a long-range (6,000 to 9,000 nautical miles) commercial jet that will carry between 200 and 250 passengers, and fly at the mid-40,000-foot level or higher at speeds between Mach 0.95 and
Mach 0.98. It will have lower nitrogen oxide emissions than today's commercial airliners, and will be quieter than upcoming noise standards and current airport requirements.

Pro/E Magazine has published the results of their
2002 Workstation benchmark. Each year Pro/E challenges hardware vendors to supply the best workstation for running Pro/ENGINEER. The goal is to help the Pro/ENGINEER user and the corporate IT decision-maker make informed, knowledgeable decisions about purchasing hardware for use with Pro/ENGINEER.

The Benchmark rates CPU performance, graphics performance, price, and benchmark time to determine an overall winner.
The results [pdf]
of the benchmark should be valid for any engineering compute-intensive task.

The second QNET-CFD Workshop
on Quality & Trust
in the Industrial Applications of CFD
is scheduled for May 23-24, 2002 in
Lucerne, Switzerland.

The Workshop offers an ideal opportunity to discover more about QNET-CFD and recent advances on Quality & Trust in the Industrial Applications of CFD. Technical papers on selected QNET-CFD Application Challenges will be presented, together with invited presentations on the work of other European Networks and CFD quality initiatives worldwide.